


all that we (never) were

by skiesaflame



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24698089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skiesaflame/pseuds/skiesaflame
Summary: It’s not always easy to reconcile what she is now with who she was then, let alone with what she could have been. Okita’s not entirely sure she wants to.
Relationships: Oda Nobunaga | Archer/Okita Souji | Sakura Saber, Okita Souji | Saber & Okita Souji Alter | Alter Ego
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	all that we (never) were

Sometimes when it’s unsettlingly quiet in a space that is usually characterised by disorderly noise and movement, Okita’s hands itch. It’s a feeling not unlike the tightness in her chest before her body’s racked with a fit of coughs that leaves a metallic aftertaste on her tongue for hours to come. The feeling is one she’s well acquainted with, but it’s no less nagging despite its persistence. Today is no different. 

She’s always found silence uneasy, discomforted by the uncertainty of no voices to echo thoughts other than her own. Sound, regardless of whether it is rough or near deafening, is a sign of life, a sign of movement at the very least. If she had been lucky enough in life to choose between dying in eerie silence while restricted to a sickbed or dying to the pained cries of battle, she’d have chosen the latter without a second thought. She’s never been particularly lucky, though, and thinking too hard on it just makes her restlessness worsen. 

(“You don’t need luck to fight,” Hijikata tells her between the clashing of their katanas. It’s after she makes the mistake of forgetting that the person she’s interacting with isn’t really a person at all, let alone the hard, yet human, man she used to know and speak freely to. 

She’s too tired to do anything other than nod along to his clipped words. The strokes of her sword shift from fluid to mechanical. The regret weighing heavily on her mind sinks down deeper into her chest, dangerously close to her heart.

The relief she had felt at first upon his materialisation is fading quickly. She finds herself wishing to be back to the days when the ghost of him hung over her shoulder, one of many, disapproving, but mercifully silent.)

While she spirals through her train of thought, her hands move from where they were neatly positioned in her lap. Her fingers dig into her thighs, and it’s only when there’s sure to be bruises left behind that she breaks away from it. Later, Nobunaga will laugh when she sees them, asking if there’s anyone she should worry about. Okita will roll her eyes and look away, not pulling away from Nobunaga’s hold. Her focus will be too distracted by the hand tracing a pattern between the blotches of blue and purple in a way that borders on both careless and attentive, yet somehow manages to not step into the mapped lines of either. That’s always been a part of her magnetism, Okita notes. Nobunaga’s actions never fall under one concrete category and can’t be filed away neatly. She’s a breath of fresh air in stiflingly confined conditions. 

Later, the itch crawling under her skin will calm to a minor enough discomfort that she can almost ignore its creeping, but for now it tears away at her nerves and cannot be avoided. She should seek out Hijikata, or hack through simulated body after simulated body until her hands grow numb. She should, yet she doesn’t. Instead, she compliments the first face she sees and picks another fight with Nobunaga and calls it a day. It may be unfulfilled by the standards she should hold herself to, but it’s a day experienced all the same.

.

Okita never truly tires of fighting. The bloodshed is always there, tinting her memories rust red and never holding much appeal, though she never so much as flinches at the sight of it. The cloying scent of death turns stale all too soon, and it lingers in every breath of air she inhales. The apparitions trailing behind have steadily grown in numbers throughout the years, hands always reaching and eyes always accusing. She never looked back during her prime, and won’t now, refusing to let their hands drag her back into the stagnant waters of inaction. 

She tires of the relentless costs and consequences of battle, but there’s a certain comfort in the repetition. A feeling of relief in the rhythm she finds in the hacking and slashing that she struggles to replicate anywhere else. 

(An image of Nobunaga flits through her mind, briefly. Her head thrown back, laughter booming, reaching every corner of the room and echoing back again. Okita hates it; envies how easily laughter spills from Nobunaga’s lips when she herself can’t laugh without tasting blood. 

She’s used to envying Nobunaga, though it’s clear now that the initial curiosity that led to her stealing glances of her were never born from the envy she’d mistaken it as at the time, but she knew what it was supposed to feel like after seeing it reflected back at her in the eyes of the men of the Shinsengumi she trained with. And she feels it again, resentment boiling under her skin. Whenever they’re alone together and Okita hears that same laugh, she reaches over and does her best to swallow the laughter into her own burning lungs, sharing the taste of the blood perpetually stuck between her teeth. It’s bitter and ugly at its core. Nobunaga doesn’t seem to mind, taking it in her stride as she always does.

There’s a rhythm to that too, Okita recalls. It feels far more familiar than it has any right to.)

Her steps falter and she momentarily loses the surety and stability in her steps. It’s a mistake that would cost her her life under normal circumstances. As it stands, she has no life left to give and the circumstances are the furthest thing from normal. She dodges a claw swiped at her head with unnatural speed, then thrusts forward. Her blade strikes true. She shakes her head, hoping to regain her bearings and loosen the tightness in her chest that somehow feels different from that which strains her lungs and stifles her breathing. 

_Nothing of use comes from sentimentality_ , a voice echoes in her ear, hard and cold. She knows this, has seen the corrosive effect of sentimentality on the battlefield, so she has learnt to swallow her hesitance along with her bloody pride, as she’s become accustomed to doing since the beginning of the worst signs of her affliction.

But she finds that this world doesn’t work quite like the one she knew then. It’s an odd thought, that her surroundings have softened while the circumstances are so dire. From the surprise she sees etched into the creased folds of the staff’s faces from time to time, she’s fairly certain that this isn’t how it’s meant to be. Okita finds that she prefers the change regardless.

A short distance off, Fujimaru and Nobunaga appear to have cleared out the last of the monsters. Nobunaga grins broadly when she catches her looking in their direction, and Fujimaru waves her over enthusiastically. Okita can’t help but smile fondly in return.

.

Her existence now doesn’t fully align with the person she was then, and far less so with the image engraved in history. The empty spaces left in-between from being summoned as a fragment of a whole grants her relative freedom to fill the hollows in through her own choices with a master whose command is as lax as Fujimaru’s. 

Naturally, fate remains cruel as ever and shackles her to the weakness she would wish most to be rid of if, the disgrace the disease brings with it following her even in death. The blow is softened by the fact that her body remains able to fight. The humiliation never fully passes. She endures it with a tight-lipped grimace of a smile. 

However much she has learnt to steel her nerves, nothing prepares her for the arrival of the heroic spirit wearing her face. She pales. Of all the apparitions that have followed her here, tangible and intangible alike, this is by far the worst. 

The blank expression her startled gaze is met with isn’t wholly unknown to her. The vacancy in her eyes is something she relates to intimately, thinking back to the depthless desolation that she sinks into during the most brutal of battles. 

Okita looks at this heroic spirit, this replica that never shows signs of the sickness or the regret that plagues her, and thinks that it would be easy to blindly hate her. Her swordsmanship is clumsy and unrefined, there are gaps in conversation where she seems to be grasping at words not yet within her reach that drag on too long for it to be anything but uncomfortable, and fighting alongside her initially tests Okita’s patience. 

What Okita finds most maddening doesn’t lie with her flaws. It’s the absence of the ones that restrict Okita herself, to this day. This is an Okita that could have been - no, the Okita that _should_ have been; one that had the time and strength left to fulfill her purpose. 

Okita _wants_ to hate her, wants to despise her for her part in yet another cosmic, sardonic joke she’s the butt of. The problem is that she just can’t bring herself to when it’s increasingly clear that it’s the idea of being replaced by something _better_ , less afflicted. 

She watches the other Okita flounder and grow. She’s a fast learner, frustratingly so. She latches onto concepts with something akin to enthusiasm, or whatever muted version thereof her limited emotional capacity allows. She approaches every moment as if it might be her last, as if she’s committing every detail to a memory she appears to fear will shatter at any given moment. (Later, Fujimaru explains that she has every reason to. Okita’s hands clench. The world isn’t much kinder to her in that form either, then. Something stirs in her gut - something fragile, bordering on mournful. Not pity, though. Never pity. She’s never appreciated the sentiment directed at her, not with the implication of the vulnerability that comes with it, and has an inkling that the other Okita wouldn’t either. Her prior resentment starts to steadily seep out of her.) 

They rarely interact at first, despite being in close proximity. They eat at the same table, gravitate towards the same places and people, but any attempts at conversation remain stilted and unnatural. Okita tries, putting in more effort than she’d like to admit. (She’s developed a feeling of obligation to care for the other Okita, and her sense of duty will invariably take priority over her personal grievances.) For all their common ground, the space between them remains too wide to bridge within a matter of days. 

Hijikata acts as a buffer of sorts. He reacts well to the other Okita’s materialisation. She decides that it’s good for him, having another familiar face around, even if it is one that’s reflected. (Okita doesn’t give voice to the selfish part of her mind that relishes the presence of someone else for Hijikata to focus his attention on. It eases some of the constant weight of his expectations of the sole Shinsengumi member beside him off her shoulders. The tightness in her chest loosens slightly, and breathing comes easier.) 

.

It’s a fairly mundane morning by Chaldea’s standards. Breakfast carries on with no more or less destruction than usual. 

Okita barely touches her food. Her hands itch, and she can’t stop fidgeting. Nobunaga is watching her intently, uncharacteristically silent, and Okita does her best not to stare back out of habit. Okita knows better than to give into it, but she can’t shake the irrational fear that she might meet Nobunaga’s gaze and find her looking at her the way their master does when her coughing fits are particularly violent, the way everyone used to before she died. Like her skin is paper and her bones glass and everything might break if she’s pushed too hard - the way the other Okita’s presence is frustratingly close to making her feel. 

She starts coughing halfway through the mealtime. Someone holds out a napkin for her to wipe away the blood staining her mouth. She looks up to see that it’s the other Okita offering it to her wordlessly. Her humiliation burns on her cheeks. She’s close to snapping, but she’s a creature of necessity, not needless cruelty. Okita chokes down her indignation. She accepts the napkin with a soft smile in thanks, and meets Nobunaga’s eyes. 

The dead come back different when they return, rarely human, and often as distant reflections of what they once were. Hijikata came back less sane, and Okita came back to a world that allows her to hesitate and falter. She can’t quite forgive herself yet, isn’t sure if she ever will, but maybe she can start letting go of the bitterness that clings to her as much as she clings to it.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve pointedly decided to ignore the mess that is Okita and Okita Alter’s relationship in the latter part of gudaguda 3. Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
